On November 26, 1976, the Sex Pistols released “Anarchy in the UK” in Great Britain, the first single from what would become Never Mind the Bollocks, Here Comes the Sex Pistols the following year. This conference – part of a larger project involving a series of events in Bordeaux and a collaboration with the Lycée Magendie (Magendie high school) – takes as it starting point the 50^th anniversary of the release, on November 26, 2026, while seeking to investigate the meaning of such a celebration. Major commemorations serve as historical shorthand, condensing complex movements and memorable transformations into a single event that serves both as an encapsulation and as a metonymy for this cumbersome complexity, boiled down to a convenient day of remembrance in the calendar. This is very much the case here. “Anarchy in the UK” cannot stand for punk as whole, but it serves as opportune shorthand, especially since the Sex Pistols were always already an artificial signifier, resulting from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s transformation of an obscure band into a global symbol of contestation. The band this blurs the line between “authenticity” and parody, with a construct so close to its inspiration that it arguably cannibalized and supplanted it (the following year, Saturday Night Fever had a similar effect on disco, another urban musical culture). In Rolling Stones magazine’s influential ranking of the 500 best rock songs of all times, established in 2004, “Anarchy in the UK” is 53^rd, ahead of most other songs conventionally identified as punk, with the possible exception of “London Calling” (15^th).

In 2016, Solveig Serres was interviewed by Télérama magazine about her research on punk, including the Punk is not Dead (PiND) projectthat she co-helms. She explained that punk constantly oscillated between marginality and mainstream acceptability, before observing that, as a result, punk remained a marginal and “dirty” object within universities. Things have been changing in the course of the past fifteen years, however. In his 2014 bibliography, Punk Goes Science, Vasileios Yfantis collated more than 350 academic references on punk or punk-adjacent phenomena. Thanks to the creation of the Punk Scholars Network in 2012, and the associated “Global Punk” collection published by Intellect, an international research infrastructure has emerged, and the number of references is probably much higher today. In France, the PiND project helmed by Solveig Serres and Luc Robène has secured major ANR grants since 2016, and has led to a number of publications addressing various aspects of the movement, from the musical genre to the process of constituting dedicated archives. Together with other research, the project has helped shed light on the simultaneous emergence of punk in various locations, challenging the idea of a strictly English and American genealogy. The scale and scope of the research conducted since the early 2010 means that it may no longer be necessary to justifiy the “legitimacy” of conducting academic research into punk. After all, even the BNF, the French national library, now hosts the archives of the iconic French band Les Béruriers Noirs, with both an exhibit and a conference on the subject organized there in 2024.

Issues surrounding the memorialization of punk have not been exhausted by this increased institutional acceptability, however. Far from offering a satisfying teleological narrative, the trajectory of punk remains fraught with paradoxes and contradictions, all parts of the cycle described by Serres. Working on the movement in 2026 leads to interrogating the legacy of a manufactured authenticity, the unique qualities of a sonic revolt that is also a commodity, the shape of a musical genre that was never just that, and the simultaneous global emergence of a British “invention”. It also implies questioning the proliferating legacy of a movement whose “golden age” ended around 1987 but which has constantly found new meanings since that date. To take but one example, since US critic Gardner Dozois coined the word “cyberpunk” in 1984, the “-punk” suffix has become a widely shared strategy to encapsulate the radical possibilities of various science-fiction subgenres, up to the recent dissemination of “solarpunk” (attested since 2012).

This conference will take a syncretic and transnational approach to the history, memory and memorialization of punk, looking at the movement as a social phenomenon, an urban (sub)culture, but also as a distinct musical and graphic aesthetic, reverberating across media (cinema, tv, comics, videogames, etc.). After 50 years, what kind of nostalgia has the “no future” slogan bred? And how has the shift to a digital-first society transformed the legacy of a movement so deeply seeped into DIY material culture?

The conference will welcome proposals focusing on the memory and commemoration of punk, in specific cultural sites or with a transnational perspective, in the following areas:

-          Musical genre, musical practices,=;

-          Political discourses and practices;

-          Socio-spatial practices;

-          Educational discourses and practices;

-          Fanzines and assorted editorial practices;

-          Institutional strategies and archives;

-          Graphic genres and practices;

-          Literature and popular culture (including cinema, videogames, comics, etc.)

This list is non-exhaustive, and these themes are of course not mutually exclusive.

Proposals, in English or French (around 250 words, with 5 keywords and a short biographical note)  should be uploaded to the conference website (right here!, though you will need to create an account)- by March 31^st 2006. Responses will be sent before June 1^st 2026.

Bernière, Vincent. 2012. Punk press : l’histoire d’une révolution esthétique, 1969-1979. La Martinière.

Étienne, Samuel. 2019. « Le fanzine DIY comme élément de structuration des réseaux punks », in Paul Edwards, Elodie Grossi, Paul Schor (dir.), Disorder. Histoire sociale des mouvements punks et post-punks. Editions Seteun, Les presses du réel.

Étienne, Samuel. 2019. Bricolage radical. Génie et banalité des fanzines do-it-yourself. Tome 2. Strandflat, Les presses du réel.

Guibert, Gérôme. 2021, « Le punk rock est né en 1972. Sociologie historique des écrits de Lester Bangs et leur impact des deux côtés de l’Atlantique », in P. Poirrier et L. Le Texier (dir.), Circulations musicales transatlantiques au XX^e siècle. Des Beatles au hardcore Punk. Editions Universitaires de Dijon.


Heron, Timothy A. 2021. Alternative Ulster ! Le punk en Irlande du Nord, 1976-1983. En marge ! 4. Riveneuve.

Hurchalla, George. 2016. Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989. PM Press.

Migliore, Olivier, Solveig Serre et Luc Robène. 2020. Des cris et des crêtes - chanter punk en français. Riveneuve.

Pilo, Baptiste. 2022. Un feu dans le ciel nordique : le black metal en Norvège, 1991-1999. En marge ! 6. Riveneuve.

Raboud, Pierre, Luc Robène et Solveig Serre. 2019. Fun et mégaphones - L’émergence du punk en Suisse, France, RFA et RDA. Riveneuve.

Rannou, Maël. 2022. Définir le fanzine. Gorgonzola. L’Égouttoir. https://hal.science/hal-04468004.

Robène Luc et Solveig Serre. 2019. Underground ! : chroniques de recherche en terres punk. En marge ! 2. Riveneuve.

Robène, Luc et Solveig Serre. 2016a. « À l’heure du punk. Quand la presse musicale française s’emparait de la nouveauté (1976-1978) ». Raisons politiques : études de pensée politique, n^o 62 : 83‑99. https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.062.0005.

Robène, Luc, et Solveig Serre. 2016b. « “On veut plus des Beatles et d’leur musique de merde !” ». Volume !. La revue des musiques populaires, n^o 13 : 1 (novembre) : 13 : 1. https://doi.org/10.4000/volume.5120.

Robène Luc et Serre Solveig, Le punk est mort. Vive le punk ! La construction médiatique de l’âge d’or du punk dans la presse musicale spécialisée en France, in Le temps des médias, Revue d’histoire, 27, 2016c, 124-138.

Roux, Manuel. 2022. « Faire “carrière” dans le punk ? : une étude de la scène punk DIY en France ». Ph D thesis, Université de Bordeaux. https://theses.hal.science/tel-03771559.

Serre, Solveig et Luc Robène. 2019. Punk is not dead. Lexique franco-punk. Nova. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02537387.

Serre, Solveig, Luc Robène et Benoît Cailmail. 2023. Bérurier Noir. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04369193.

Street, John, Worley, M Matthew, Wilkinson, David. 2025. « Why 1976? Explaining the rise and fall of protest music », in: Manabe, N. and Drott, E., (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music. Oxford University Press.

Worley, Matthew. 2024. Zerox Machine: Punk, Post-Punk and Fanzines in Britain, 1976-88. Reaktion.

----------. 2018. «  Whose culture? Fanzines, politics and agency », in Ripped, Torn and Cut: Pop, Politics and Punk Fanzines from 1976. Manchester University Press.